Terms of Service

PhotoNations is operated by [legal entity name], [registered address]. Contact: takedown@photonations.com.

• Browsing needs no account. Uploading, voting and reporting do.
• Being listed is by application. You apply once, with a link to your work elsewhere and 5 photographs. We decide whether to admit you, and tell you either way by email.
• One account per person. Give accurate details — your country and city determine which boards you appear on.
• Some usernames are reserved, including names that would collide with parts of this site.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you think it has been compromised.

You keep full copyright in everything you upload. Nothing here transfers ownership.

By uploading, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display and reproduce your photographs on this site, and to show them when promoting the site and its competitions — for example in a results announcement or a share card. That licence lasts while the work is published here. Delete a photograph and we stop using it, though copies already distributed elsewhere by others are outside our control.

You may withdraw work at any time by deleting it from your portfolio.

• Photographs you took yourself, and hold the rights to publish.
• Not AI-generated images, renders, or work that is not photography.
• Nothing that infringes another person's copyright, privacy or publicity rights.
• Nothing unlawful, or content depicting people who have not consented where consent is required.

Portfolios are capped at 10 photographs. The cap is deliberate: a small, chosen body of work is the point.

We are deciding one thing when we read an application: whether you are a photographer. We are not judging whether your work is good — that is what the seasonal competition is for, and it is decided by other photographers and a jury, not by us.

Once you are admitted, what you upload is published immediately. We do not review each photograph, and being listed is not an endorsement of any particular image.

We may remove individual photographs, and may suspend or remove an account — for work that is not your own, for images that are not photographs, or for anything unlawful. A suspended profile stops being public; nothing is deleted by suspension alone.

Anyone signed in can report a photograph. Rights holders without an account can use the process on our reporting and takedowns page.

• Photographs enter a season stripped of name, country and city. Voting is blind, and identities are attached only once results are final.
• You cannot vote on your own work.
• Coordinated voting, multiple accounts, or any attempt to manipulate results will disqualify the entries involved and may remove the account.
• Results, scores and badges are ours to publish, correct, or withdraw if an entry turns out to breach these terms.
• Entries reaching a shortlist may be checked against reverse image search before results are published.

Every ranking on the site is built the same way: sort the photographs by score, take the best few, add them up. What changes is how many count.

• A photographer is scored on their best 3 photographs in the competition.
• A city is scored on the best 5 photographs entered by photographers who live there.
• A country is scored on the best 10 photographs entered by photographers who live there.

A country’s score is not the sum of every vote it received, because that would hand the table permanently to the countries with the most photographers. Nor is it an average, because one strong photograph would then outrank a country with hundreds of good ones. Taking the best ten means a handful of photographers in a small country can genuinely beat a large one.

A photographer contributes at most their best 3 photographs to their city’s and country’s score, however many they entered. Entering more photographs gives you more chances of a good result for yourself — it cannot add a fourth photograph to your country’s ten. This is why extra entries cannot be used to buy a country a better position.

While a competition is running, scores come from community voting and are measured as likes per time shown, not total likes — otherwise a photograph seen more often would win by exposure alone. Once judging finishes, published results use the jury’s scores instead. The two are different scales, so the number you see during a competition and the number in the final results are not comparable.

A position is only shown once it means something. Personal rankings appear once a country or city has at least 20 listed photographers, and a city or country position appears once at least three of its peers are ranked. Below that we show counts instead of positions.

• Every admitted photographer may enter 3 photographs in a competition at no charge.
• You may buy one bundle of additional entries per competition, in one of two sizes: 3 entries for €20.00, or 9 entries for €40.00. VAT is added where applicable, at the rate of the country you pay from, and the total is shown before you pay.
• At most 3 of your photographs reach the jury, however many you enter. Extra entries give you more chances that your best work is what gets judged — they do not give you more of the jury’s time.
• Extra entries give you more chances with the jury, more work seen, and more chances at a badge. They do not increase what you contribute to your city’s or country’s score, which is capped at your best 3 photographs either way.
• Voting does not know which entries were paid for. Photographs are shown to voters least-seen first, so every entry gets the same exposure.
• Entry fees are not refundable. By buying extra entries you ask for them immediately and accept that you lose the 14-day right of withdrawal that would otherwise apply to a digital purchase. Bundles belong to the competition they were bought for and do not carry over to the next one.
• If a competition is cancelled before judging begins, bundles bought for it are refunded. If your account is suspended for breaching these terms, they are not.
• An invoice is issued for every purchase and emailed to you.

You can delete your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms. Removing an account removes its photographs from public view; results already published may remain in the historical record, with the entry attributed or anonymised at our discretion.

The site is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

These terms are governed by the law of [jurisdiction]. We may change them; material changes will be announced on the site before they take effect.